Well, we
didn't see that one coming. Google just announced today via its official blog
that itwould
be acquiring Motorola Mobility, an American company that produces
everything from the Wayans Family-esque lineup of Droid smartphones to the
10.1" Xoom tablet.

“This
transaction offers significant value for Motorola Mobility’s stockholders and
provides compelling new opportunities for our employees, customers, and
partners around the world," said Sanjay Jha, CEO of Motorola Mobility.
"We have shared a productive partnership with Google to advance the
Android platform, and now through this combination we will be able to do even
more to innovate and deliver outstanding mobility solutions across our mobile
devices and home businesses.”

“We expect
that this combination will enable us to break new ground for the Android
ecosystem," added Andy Rubin, Google's Mobile SVP. "However, our
vision for Android is unchanged and Google remains firmly committed to Android
as an open platform and a vibrant open source community. We will continue to
work with all of our valued Android partners to develop and distribute
innovative Android-powered devices.”

If there are
no legal roadblocks in Google's path, the deal will be completed by early 2012.

According to
Google CEO Larry Page, the move to purchase Motorola Mobility will not have an
affect on the openness of the Android operating system. "We will run
Motorola as a separate business," said Page. "Many hardware partners
have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing to work
with all of them to deliver outstanding user experiences."

Page goes on
to say that we should expect to see great things on the hardware and software
side of things:

The
combination of Google and Motorola will not only supercharge Android, but will
also enhance competition and offer consumers accelerating innovation, greater
choice, and wonderful user experiences. I am confident that these great
experiences will create huge value for shareholders.

Well it seems all the major platforms now are moving toward tight hardware+software integration. There is of course Apple with iOS/iPhone, HP with WebOS/Pre, RIM with QNX/Blackberry, then Microsoft with WP7/Nokia phones, and now Google with Android/Motorola phones.

That kind of leaves HTC, Samsung, LG, etc as the odd men out. Yes they can still compete on features, since first-party devices will probably focus on pushing a very strong core feature set leaving room on the sides, but this will limit margins since they can't likely charge a whole lot more even with more features. Plus, if Google wants to save one or two flashy, new features for their own first-party phones under the premise of getting it ironed out before rolling it out to other manufacturers, other OEMs will also be at a disadvantage.

Other than piles of cash, I don't know if anything has been promised to Nokia in terms of Win7 phone to give it an edge on the software side of things versus other phone makers who decide to use Win7 phone. I believe the whole nokia deal was done because none of these android handset makers were really expressing any interst in putting out phones with win7 phone platform. Sure some did make handsets, but they were released using the same hardware that droid phones had already had for over a year.

I don't have the original article, but I seem to remember that Nokia was supposed to get more flexibility to modify the OS, not necessarily redesign the UI, but add things, access to lower levels of the OS, etc. Perhaps Microsoft was always planning on slowly opening things up for OEM customization as subsequent versions of WP7 are released and Nokia is just the first to get visibility on this.

quote: That kind of leaves HTC, Samsung, LG, etc as the odd men out. Yes they can still compete on features

Well most of the people I know don't really care if it is an Iphone, Android, WP7, etc.... They look at smart phones as a whole group of the same thing, only features matter, not OS. Most of the people I know who have smart phones don't know what an OS is or even care.

I think that places like HTC, LG and Samsung will do fine, as long as they make competitive phones.

quote: Well most of the people I know don't really care if it is an Iphone, Android, WP7, etc.... They look at smart phones as a whole group of the same thing, only features matter, not OS. Most of the people I know who have smart phones don't know what an OS is or even care.

You must know a lot smarter people than I do, I'm afraid, and I'm an EE. There's definitely a decent number that look at the phones more critically, but for the vast majority they want the iPhone with the most Gee Bees. Even among the people with Android phones, a lot bought them because you can get a Galaxy S for free with a 3 year activation, while an iPhone 4 32GB is $270 with 3 year activation. If they were the same price there would be even more iPhones out there.

quote: You must know a lot smarter people than I do, I'm afraid, and I'm an EE.

I am an EE as well, although most of my work is on a micron level now.

You misunderstand me I think. The people that I know are not really choosy about the phone that they own, only that it is a smart phone and it has certain features, the brand does not matter as much as long as the price is right and it is with their favorite carrier.

"We are going to continue to work with them to make sure they understand the reality of the Internet. A lot of these people don't have Ph.Ds, and they don't have a degree in computer science." -- RIM co-CEO Michael Lazaridis